Suck.com: The Fish

for 11 September 2000. Updated every WEEKDAY.

Tim Cavanaugh
Special Guest Editor

Terry Colon
Art Director

Heather Havrilesky
Senior Editor

Phillip Bailey
Production Editor

Joey Anuff
Publisher

Kiss My Grits

Dear 40th,

My mother and I believe you have a drinking problem.

Want some eggs?

<markalfred@earthlink.net>

I appreciate your concern, but I'll pass. If I learned anything as a Matt Dillon-style drunk suburban teen, it was to avoid eating anything that's difficult to clean off of your steering wheel.

40th Street Black

Best breakfast I ever had: One traditional Irish breakfast in Bethlehem, Penn., during the city's lovely Musikfest.

Best breakfast I've had recently: A very creative meal at a place called Eggspectations in Montreal last month. The place had almost a half-hour wait (40 minutes Canadian) on a Sunday afternoon, with good reason.

Why make these observations? Simple: I live in a city with no breakfast places that do anything for me. Probably nothing particularly motivating within an hour or two of me. BUT I remember breakfasts like the above places (the Towne Restaurant in Buffalo merits a mention, too) and even breakfast experiences in nondescript second-rate breakfast houses more vividly than any dinner I've ever had.

Certainly this must mean something, but what it's really doing is making me want a bacon and cheddar omelet. Mmmm, hot grease.

Nice piece!

Tim Nekritz
<nekritz@dreamscape.com>

My memory of living in Pennsylvania is that the only thing more startling than the number of breakfast joints was the size of the grocery store meat counters, but it's been a few years. And I wish I had written something about the Sunday Morning Brunch Wait - that first important relationship test.

40th Street Black

P.S. — With a name like Eggspectations, breakfast better be creative...

I have two specific comments on your breakfast column:

1) How could you write a purported socio-culinary analysis of breakfast qua breakfast without at least mentioning Hunter S. Thompson's oft-cited, prescriptive love for (and obsessive over-design of) that meal?

2) "Endow with" or "bestow upon" — not "endow upon."

Overall, I found it kind of sloppy, and lacking in the promised nutritional content, but still enjoyable; like a nostalgia-prompted serving of Lucky Charms.

Ted Blanchard
<kinggoll@hotmail.com>

1. I didn't think of it, not once, until you mentioned it just now. Considering I've used Thompson twice now to support entire paragraphs in previous Suck essays, I consider this an opportunity lost.

2. Sorry about that - the word "endow" makes me nervous.

And it's not fair to make better use of the language than I did. I'll endeavor to make future meals more satisfying, although being compared to Lucky Charms is a good thing. In fact, being compared to any cereal is fine with me - except Sugar Smacks, because Sugar Smacks makes your urine smell funny.

Thanks for reading, and your note.

Best,

40th Street Black

Chickenhawk Down

Nice column of questionable
questioning on Dick Cheney's
veracity and strategic judgment,
but for venality and ineptitude,
he'll have to go far to match Joe
Lieberman's 1970 vanity book on
East/West relations, the sum of
which was that, hey, the U.S. and
the USSR are morally equivalent,
so, like whatever. As with many
"neo" liberals, Joe has spent the
past decade quietly slipping away
from past flings with the truly
"Evil" Empire. Hey - "veracity,"
"venality," and "vanity!"
Alliteration aweigh!

Ralph Ward
<rward@boardroominsider.com>

I absolutely promise that Vinegar
Joe will get his, soon and often,
from the good folks at Suck. We
just, you know, have a list we have
to go through. Hang in there.

Ambrose Beers

Wow, that's a hell of a piece. I'm
now fifteen minutes late for class
- I had to stick around and finish
it! Of course, I never liked
Cheney, so I suppose I'm biased to
begin with :)

I found it a little odd, though,
that you didn't once use the phrase
"vice president" even while talking
about Al Gore. Was that
intentional, I'm curious?

John Murphy
<john_murphy_42@yahoo.com>

Never even occurred to me. I guess
I just figured everyone knows who
Al Gore is. You know, Al Gore -
the, uh... oh, that guy. (The one
who drinks all the iced tea, and
isn't sure why he's hanging out
with the monks.)

Ambrose Beers

Hey Soldier Boy!

Thanks for another one of your
brilliant essays! I knew there was
something about Dick Cheney that I
didn't like. (As much as the idea
of a 'Bush/Dick' ticket cracks me
up) It's pretty evident that were
going to have yet another election
involving selecting the lesser of
two complete morons (and their
running mates) Terry's cartoon of
Cheney's military advice is
classic!! I also love the bit about
Gore's big sob story about tobacco
killing his sister, and then
continuing to take kickbacks from
big tobacco - maybe he needed some
extra funding to invent the
internet - and those buddhists just
weren't getting the bills paid.

Keep on sucking in the free
world!!!

Robert C.
<robert@logixx.com>

I love it when you call me
soldier boy.

Ambrose Beers

Stop it - you're scaring me!

Of course, the military mind
Cheney's most resembles belonged to
General Haig - not Alexander,
Nixon's in-house Norm Crosby
knock-off and my personal vote for
"Most Likely to Be Revealed as
'Deep Throat' on his Deathbed" -
but rather Sir Douglas, the mass
murderer of the Somme campaigns.
Only instead of "Boys Own Paper"
tales of derring-do against swarthy
Rajas and voodoo-chanting
fuzzy-wuzzies, Cheney's primary
education on tactical doctrine has
clearly been "A Bridge Too Far" and
"Rambo."

On the other hand, I feel compelled
to point out that genuine military
commanders have, as a rule, been
less than magnificent Presidents,
notably Grant and Polk (the
latter's illegal war on Mexico was
probably an impeachable offense).
Worse yet have been the part-time
warriors who fancied themselves
battle-scarred heroes who knew what
it is to fight toe-to-toe. Men like
Jackson, Kennedy and TR tended to
see policy making as a game of
brinkmanship, where the winner was
the one who ran headfirst toward
disaster fastest. (Jackson's
effective invasion of South
Carolina could actually have set
off the Civil War 40 years earlier,
for example.)

Sadly, no one currently up for the
job of Commander in Chief right now
looks to have the faintest idea how
to conduct business as the last
Supreme Global Military Power in
existence. And I would include
Nader, who, despite being
unelectable, is also unqualified.

Where is Harold Stassen when you
need him?

Dr. Robert
<rss2@idt.net>

Wouldn't it be really comforting to
not worry about finding a
commander-in-chief who had the
desire and ability to conduct
business as the head of the "last
Supreme Global Military Power in
existence"? The only response that
ever really occurs to me, watching
all the bellicose posturing that
passes for campaigning, now, is: My
god, will you people just calm the
fuck down? But probably the kind of
people who think to go after the
presidency aren't the kind of
people who know how to do that. Why
buy the toy if you aren't play with
it?

The whole thing just makes me want
to take a nap.

Ambrose Beers

Ambrose,

A while ago you left suck to —
what sounded like — enlist in
the military. Are you writing your
excellent essays from the barracks
or what?

Michael Fox
<mfox@rambus.com>

Yep. Thirteen months to go.

Ambrose Beers

The Shit

Krushchev Remembers, by Nikita Krushchev (authorship disputed), translated by Strobe Talbott

Five-Star Day Cafe
Athens, Ga.

Salon's "Action Figures"
TV ad

Donna's Famous "Long and Short of It," by Donna Anderson and friends

Two-Lane Blacktop, directed by Monte Hellman (The Anchor Bay/Universal letterboxed edition)

George Bush, Dark Prince of Love: A Presidential Romance, by Lydia Millet (Scribner)

King Kong: The Complete 1933 Film Score, by Max Steiner Moscow Symphony Orchestra, William J. Stromberg conductor (Marco Polo)

Eightball #20, by Dan Clowes (Fantagraphics Books)

The ECW's Little Spike Dudley

Stan Kenton, City of Glass, featuring arrangements by legendary weirdo Bob Graettinger (EMD/Blue Note)

Comix 2000, Edited and published by L'Association, 2000

Star Dudes

Do you know of stuff that doesn't actively suck? Things so good they deserve to make the Shitlist? Send your suggestions to us.